From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sleep deprived driving is the operation of a
motor vehicle while being cognitively impaired by a lack of sleep. Sleep deprivation is a major cause of
motor vehicle accidents, and it can impair the human brain as much
as alcohol can. According to
a 1998 survey, 23% of adults have fallen asleep while driving.[1]
According to the United States Department of Transportation, male
drivers admit to have fallen asleep while driving twice as much as
female drivers.[2]

250,000 drivers fall asleep at the wheel everyday, according to
the Division of Sleep Medicine at the Harvard Medical School and in
a national poll released last year by the National Sleep
Foundation, 54% of adult drivers said they had driven while drowsy
during the past year with 28% saying they had actually fallen
asleep while driving. According to the National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration, Drowsy Driving is a factor in more than
100,000 crashes, resulting in 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries
annually.[3]

The
effects of sleep deprivation on driving performance

Sleep deprivation has been proven to affect driving ability in
three areas:[4]

It impairs coordination.

It causes longer reaction times.

It impairs judgment.

The effects of sleep deprivation compared to the effects of
alcohol

Numerous studies have found that sleep deprivation can affect
driving as much, and sometimes more, than alcohol. British
researchers have found that driving after 17 to 18 hours of being
awake is as harmful as driving with a blood alcohol level of 0.05%,
the legal limit in many European countries.[4] Men
under 30 are more likely to be in an accident caused by sleep
deprivation. [5]

Accidents

It has been estimated that between 16% and 60% of all accidents
have sleep deprivation as a cause.[4]
Between 1989 and 1993, it has been estimated that an average of
1,544 people were killed annually in the US as a result of sleep
deprived driving.[1].
Accidents related to sleep deprivation are most likely to happen in
the early to midafternoon, and in the very early morning hours.[6]
Sleep deprivation was blamed a major cause of the Selby rail
crash in which 10 people died and 82 were injured.

Unique warning sign on Interstate 15 in Utah

Sleep
deprived driving in truckers and in the military

Sleep deprived driving is a major problem in truckers and in the
military. The US military estimates that approximately 9% of
crashes resulting in death or serious injury during Operation Desert Storm and Operation Desert Shield were
caused by sleep deprived driving.[1]

Physician
reporting

Six states require physicians to report patients who drive while
impaired, including those who may be chronically sleep
deprived.[7]
Another twenty-five states permit physicians to violate doctor-patient confidentiality to report
sleep-deprived drivers or those with sleeping disorders likely to
impair driving, if they so choose.[7]
The American Medical
Association endorsed physician reporting in 1999, but deferred
to the states on whether such notification should be mandatory or
permissive.[7]
An authority on professional confidentiality, Jacob
Appel of New York University, has written
that physician reporting is a double-edged sword, because it may
deter some patients from seeking care. According to Appel,
"Reporting may remove some dangerous drivers from the roads, but if
in doing so it actually creates other dangerous drivers, by scaring
them away from treatment, then society has sacrificed
confidentiality for no tangible return in lives saved."[7]

Government
response to sleep deprived driving

Governments had attempted to reduce sleep deprived driving
through education messages and by ingraining roads with dents,
known as rumble strips in the U.S., which cause a
noise when drivers wander out of their lane. The Government of Western
Australia recently introduced a "Driver Reviver" program where
drivers can receive free coffee to help them stay awake.[8]